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ICT4D Week 2018

Saturday, September 17, 2016

FG stimulates economy with N350 billion capital vote

In sticking with earlier promise on capital projects, the
Federal Government has said it stimulated the economy with the immediate release
of the sum of N350 billion capital votes to tackle the economic crisis
currently facing the Nigeria, reports ITRealms.

Affirming this to ITRealms, the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun
disclosed this during a press meeting in Abuja on Friday, saying the current
administration is not backing down on its decision to stimulate the economy.

“With the N350 billion to be released, next week, the federal
government would have released the total sum of N770 billion for capital
projects this year, having released N420 billion thus far in 2016,” she said. explaining
that the bulk of the money so far released went into on-going projects,
especially works, defence, transportation, interior, power and agriculture.

In addition, the minister disclosed that the administration
was working on raising $1 billion Eurobond, stressing that the proceeds for
this would be used only for capital projects.

Giving further clarifications on the Eurobond issue,
Director-General, Debt Management Office (DMO), Dr. Abraham Nwankwo, said, “We
intend to raise the money before the year ends. In terms of the progress made
so far, more than five weeks ago we put out advertisements for Request For Proposals
in local and international media, following due process so that we can allow
transaction partners who are interested to compete.

“The closing date of the
RFPs is September 19, 2016 and immediately after that we will execute the
process of vetting and selection. “We have a directive to make sure we use
minimum time to conclude all these activities. So we assure you that we are
going to cut the time because of the emergency situation. Before the middle of
December, we will have the money. We are very focused on the fact that these
monies are needed urgently to turn around the economy and we are working on
that," Adeosun said.

On the issue of bidding process and open procurement, the
minister explained that what is needed is a balance between speed and
transparency, saying that is why we are engaging the National Assembly to
support our request to truncate the process.

“We are already talking to members of the National Assembly,
explaining to them why this is necessary so that when we release money, it is
not just going to be sitting in the TSA account but it will actually be going
down into contractors and appropriately utilised,” she said.